House Of Fools

Vic and Bob's rumbustious riff on the trad sitcom continues with its best episode to date, centred on Vic's brother Bosh's (Dan Skinner) attempts to convince his probation officer (Luther star Nikki Amuka-Bird) that he is in gainful employment. He determines that the best way to do this is to open a pop-up restaurant in Bob's humble abode, with the double act installed as its head chefs. Plot deviations include Matt Berry stomping about in cast-iron boots and a very funny mishap with a nerve agent.

Horses gallop around Bob's beautiful home in this week's surreal scamper as Vic Reeves pastes up some unique wallpaper he bought on eBay. And while ex-con Bosh ropes the gang in on impressing his probation officer - guest star Nikki Amuka-Bird (Luther) - the Beef (Matt Berry) shows up sporting a buttercup-yellow belt. So naturally he gets Vic and Bob to kneel before him to try that thing you do with buttercups - but with belts instead. Come close... no, closer.

Radio Times review

Vic has redecorated Bob's front room using wallpaper patterned with horses - German honeymoon horses, "Some galloping, some not so galloping." It doesn't sound like much of a catchphrase, but as each of the characters enters and picks up on it, the joke builds ridiculously. It's also another instance of the way Bob gets slightly excluded by the other characters and mocked for being a bit square - not least by his sneering teenage (Norwegian) son Erik.

But it's oddball friends Beef and Bosh who steal the show tonight. Beef (the terrific Matt Berry) enters wearing a roaringly daft catsuit, accessorised with "the most yellow of all my yellow belts", then surpasses it later with a tent-like Hawaiian muumuu dress. Add in a coconut-topped pizza, iron-ore shoes and some African nerve agent and you have the best episode yet.

Vic and Bob, everything you need to know - infographic

The comedy duo who revolutionised modern Britain with eranu, uvavu and Greg Mitchell, the sandy coloured labrador.

Basing a comedy episode on, in and around a talking pork pie might seem the stuff of a fevered imagination combined with an assortment of dubious substances but I know where Vic and Bob were coming from in House Of Fools (BBC Two).

Pork pies have a way of speaking to you when you've got 20 minutes to kill between the end of a particularly messy Thursday night leaving do and the 11.18pm from Liverpool Street. And bosh, there goes a week on the 5:2 diet. But I digress.

A not-so-humble pork pie was the kicking-off point for the second slice of Vic and Bob's agreeably bonkers sitcom, which thankfully built on last week's opener with a riot of farting floors, jokes about ELO's archivist and an animated sequence of Barry Gibb entertaining a lady in Epping Forest with his cannon.

And an extra point for using the words 'beef' and 'curtain' together while staying true to the central narrative.

What is it about pork pies that make them so darn tempting? Vic and Bob are powerless to resist the siren song of processed pig encased in jelly and pastry when neighbour Julie entrusts them with the care of a special pork pie she's saving for the imminent visit of Bruce Willis - so they set about attempting to procure a replacement. As plots go, it's daft even by Reeves and Mortimer standards. But there are a fair few crackling gags.

Radio Times review

"I took the liberty of warming up your toupee," Vic tells Bob. Can you imagine that line in any other sitcom? Come to think of it, has there ever been a mainstream series (I'm discounting This Is Jinsy) where the lead character wears a hairpiece that is then subjected to mishaps and indignities?

In that respect House of Fools breaks new ground, and its plots aren't exactly boilerplate either: tonight's revolves around a large pork pie that next-door neighbour Julie has baked to impress a visiting Bruce Willis. When she leaves it for our heroes to look after it fares badly, of course, leading to a robbing-the-pie-factory scene, old-fashioned fart gags and the improbable line, delivered by Matt Berry as Beef: "Don't kill me! I'm ELO's archivist!"

Julie goes away on holiday to Mexico (or Exeter - she isn't sure), leaving Vic, Bob, Beef and Bosh to look after a sizeable luxury pork pie that she's got in specially for Bruce Willis, who is swinging by her flat to audition for the lead role in the film of her latest erotic novel. Things quickly go awry, with the chaps unable to resist the pie's meaty charms. The only hope for replacing it is to break into the shop of an infamous and psychopathic pie-maker who Bosh once shared a prison cell with. Naturally, much idiocy ensues.

If ever there was evidence that you should quit while you're not as ahead as you once were, House of Fools provides it by the bucketload. The inexorable decline of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer was pretty apparent during their recent online-only sketch affair, for which the description of tepid would have constituted a rave review. And now they're back with a sitcom that almost defiles the memory of their greatest hits (Shooting Stars and Catterick for two) and drags down the normally excellent Matt Berry with them.

It's full of the standard Vic 'n' Bob nonsense, but time has simply not been kind to their brand of non-sequitur surrealism, and you can't help but long for the days of the dove from above and Les Facts. House of Fools is oovavoo indeed.

Vic and Bob's latest offering, House of Fools, is a sort of parody of a classic sitcom and sees the pair's unique humour employed in a new setting.

Anybody who's ever seen one of Vic and Bob's comedy shows before knows exactly what to expect from House of Fools. Their new sitcom is essentially Shooting Stars in a house with all of their comedy regulars popping by to sing a song and do a bit of comedy.

I have to personally say that I rarely laughed during the course of the show, but that's to say I didn't enjoy it. Though the antics of Vic and Bob have begun to get a bit stale, especially after seeing how good Vic is when he acts under his real name of Jim Moir. Luckily there's a lot of talent in the supporting cast namely from Morgana Robinson as the sex-starved neighbour and Matt Berry as the boisterous Beef.

I have to say I'm not quite sure about House of Fools yet, as I don't know if it's trying to be a fully-fledged sitcom in its own right or simply attempting to parody the art of the situation comedy. But I'm definitely going to stick with it for now, mainly because I find Vic and Bob utterly enjoyable in whatever they do.